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  Mykkael stirred in a vain effort to ease his scarred leg. His scuffed boots were too soiled to rest on a footstool, though the chamber was furnished with several, carved in flourishes, and sewn with tapestry cushions. Barqui’ino-trained to fight an armed enemy bare-handed, he still felt on edge, stripped of his blades and his sword. His absence from his post unsettled him as well. By now, the Lowergate populace must be seething. The princess’s disappearance was too momentous to stifle, and the lives of Sessalie’s servants too prosaic, to keep such an upset discreet.

  Taskin’s focus stayed relentless as he reached his conclusion, a summary drawn like barbed hooks from a spirit that placed little value on sentiment. ‘I don’t believe Princess Anja’s playing pranks. I’ve known her like an uncle since the hour of her birth. Tonight, I fear she’s in grave danger.’

  ‘Her Grace is Sessalie’s heart, I see that much plainly’ Where trust was concerned, Mykkael preferred truth. ‘I may not know and love her as you do, but as I judge men, no garrison will keep fighting trim with the vital spirit torn out of it. That does concern me. I’ll stay diligent.’

  Commander Taskin slid back his chair and arose. A snap of hard fingers brought a page to the door, bearing Mykkael’s worn weapons. ‘If this kingdom relies on you, Captain, on my watch, you will not fall short. A horse is saddled for you in the courtyard, with an escort to see you through Highgate.’ As the nicked harness and bundle of sheathed throwing knives were returned, Taskin delivered his stinging, last word. ‘And clean the damned rust off that steel, soldier. Set against your war record, and your reputation, that negligence is a disgrace!’

  The gelding in the courtyard was a raw-boned chestnut, fit and trained for war, but groomed with the high gloss of a tourney horse. Mykkael assessed its rolling eye with trepidation. Its flattened ears and strutting prowess might look impressive on parade. Yet in a drunken, celebratory crowd, its mettlesome temper was going to pose a nasty liability.

  ‘Commander said not to give you a lady’s mount,’ said the leather-faced stableman, the reins offered up with a sneer. ‘One that could stay in your charge at the keep, and not let you down under need. Your horsemanship’s up to him? Lose your seat, this brute’s apt to stomp you to jelly’

  Mykkael took charge of the bridle, annoyed. The challenge pressed on him by Taskin’s guard escort rankled him to the edge of revolt. The smug urge, ubiquitous to men trained at weaponry, to test his mettle, was a trait he missed least from his years as a mercenary. Worse yet, when that puerile proving involved a tradition the more fiercely reviled: the handling of dumb beasts whose innate, trusting nature had been twisted to serve as a weapon.

  The horse just straightforwardly hated. Conditioned for battle to use hooves and teeth, it swung muscled hindquarters under the torchlight. The chestnut neck rippled. A blunt, hammer head snaked around, lips peeled and teeth parted to bite.

  Mykkael raised a bent elbow, let the creature’s own impetus gouge the soft flesh just behind the flared nostril. ‘Think well, you ugly dragon,’ he murmured, his expert handling primed with a taut rein as the horse tried to jib and lash back. The striking forehoof missed smashing his hip, positioned as he was by the gelding’s shoulder. For the benefit of the avid watchers, he snarled, ‘In hard times, on campaign, I’ve been known to slaughter your four-legged brothers for the stewpot.’

  One vault, off his good leg, set him astride before the brute beast could react. A jab of his heel, a braced rein, and he had the first buck contained, then redirected into a surging stride forward.

  Behind him, the belated guards set hasty feet in their stirrups and swung into their saddles to catch up. Their dismayed northern faces raised Mykkael’s soft laughter. ‘Who’s lost their beer coin to the rumour I can’t ride?’

  Both men looked sheepish.

  The garrison captain was quick to commiserate. ‘I’d buy you a brew to remedy your loss, if I had any loose coin myself.’

  Yet the prospect of such camaraderie with a foreigner made the guardsmen more uncomfortable still.

  Mykkael’s grin widened, a flash of white teeth under the cloak hood just raised to mask the embarrassment of his origins. ‘Think well on that,’ he murmured in the same tone used a moment before on the gelding. He led off, reined the sullen horse through the archway. The clatter of shod hooves rang down the deserted avenue, bouncing echoes off the mortised façade of the wing that housed visiting ambassadors. The four-quartered banner of Devall hung limp by the entry, its gold-fringed trim tarnished with dew. Nor did the pair of ceremonial sentries stir a muscle to mark the passage of Mykkael’s cloaked figure, attended by Taskin’s outriders.

  The ill-matched cavalcade passed out of the bailey, into the grey scrim of the fog that rolled off the peaks before dawn light. Stars poked through, a scatter of fuzzed haloes, punch-cut by the spires of the palace. At street level, the torches streamed, their smeared light gleaming over the dull iron sheen of wet cobbles.

  That moment, a raggedy figure darted out of the shadows.

  Mykkael’s horse skittered, snorting. He slammed his fist into its neck, used the rein, and hauled its proud crest to the side to curb its lunging rear. His gasped oath slipped restraint, while the figure, an old woman, came on and made a suicidal grab for his stirrup.

  Her hands groped and locked on his ankle, instead. ‘Young captain,’ she cried in a guttural, thick accent. ‘A boon, I beg you! Please, out of pity, would you lift off a short curse!’

  Mykkael kicked her away. As she fell, shrilling outrage, he slammed his heel into the raging horse. Before its raised forehooves came down, he drove it into a clattering sidle. Once clear, he sprang from the saddle, flung his reins to the guards, then forced his racked knee to bear urgent weight.

  In two steps, he reached the woman and caught her skinned hands. ‘I’m sorry, old mother.’ Her tattered clothes smelled of dust and floor wax, and her hands wore the callus of a labourer. A cleaning drudge, bent and stiff with arthritis; his heart felt nothing but pity. ‘My roughness aside, that horse would have killed you, leaving your family bereft. I regret also, for your disappointment. But I cannot lift any curses, short or long form.’ Through her hiss of displeasure, he reached under the outraged tension of thin shoulders and braced her attempt to sit upright. ‘Put simply, I lack the background.’

  She rolled off a rude phrase in dialect; would have pulled away in her rage, had he let her. Instead, firmly gentle, he raised her to her feet, and steadied her through the shaken aftermath as she dusted her skirts back to rights.

  The next question was his, spoken in the Scoraign tongue inferred by her lilting accent.

  She raised filmed eyes, and stared at him, furious. The next insult she uttered was clipped.

  While the guards watched, dumbfounded, Mykkael shut his eyes. He let her go. Masterfully calm, he repeated himself.

  The drudge spat at his feet. She said five spaced words, then stalked away, the rustle of her threadbare garments lost in the muffling mist.

  ‘Why did you lie to her?’ The ruddy guard was forced to speak sharply to be heard through the gelding’s rank stamping.

  Mykkael snapped up his chin, aroused from blind thought, his brow knitted in puzzlement. ‘Lie to her?’ Then his incomprehension broke. He swore under his breath. ‘I can’t raise curses! Powers of fury! I wouldn’t know a desert shaman’s singing if the spell weave it held slapped me breathless!’

  When the guardsman stayed sceptical, and his husky colleague muttered a timeworn slur, Mykkael’s temper frayed. He limped forward, snapped up the chestnut’s rein, and glared in unvarnished disgust. ‘I was raised by an uplands merchant who spoke the same milk tongue you did.’

  Silence reflected the men’s towering disbelief; Mykkael drew his irritation sharply in backhand, made aware by the ragged intensity of his feelings that he was bone-tired. Two nights on duty without decent sleep would fray any man’s judgement, never mind wreck the grace for diplomacy. He ignored the screaming twinge of his leg,
fended off another snap from the horse, and, without mounting, marched it straight back towards the archway.

  ‘Captain! Where do you think you are going?’ Flustered again, no small bit annoyed, the pair of palace guardsmen spurred after him. ‘The Highgate is down slope!

  ‘So it is. But I’m going back to the bailey’ While the ornery chestnut slopped foam on his wrists, and lashed its tail in thwarted temper, Mykkael turned his head. This time his smile held no easy humour; only purpose keen as a knife’s edge. ‘Or don’t you believe Commander Taskin should be told that the storeroom closet where that drudge keeps her brooms has been scribed with a sorcerer’s mark?’

  III. Craftmark

  THE RICH TRAPPINGS OF FINE MARBLE AND CITRUS-OILED PARQUET DID NOT EXTEND TO THE WARREN OF STORE CELLARS UNDERNEATH THE king’s palace. Here, the close-set corridors had been chiselled into the mountain granite underlying the bedrock foundations. Cobwebs streamed from the soot-blackened ceiling, rippling sheet gold in the torch light. The floors lit by that flickering glow were rough stone, levelled with footprinted clay.

  Mykkael lifted the flame of his borrowed spill and arose from his hurried survey. ‘No tracks here but servants’ clogs, and ones made by a heavyset fellow wearing hard-soled boots.’

  ‘That would be the wine steward,’ said the bearded soldier, standing with folded arms beside him. ‘He’s grown too fat for clogs. Can’t see over his huge belly any more. Bercie—that’s his wife—she bought him the boots. She feared he was likely to trip one day, and bash his old pan in a tumble.’

  ‘Wise woman,’ Mykkael murmured, cautious himself, as the yawning servant indicated the way towards a shaft with another frame stairway. The obstacle posed an unwelcome hazard for a man afflicted with lameness. ‘We go down here?’

  The disgruntled lackey bobbed his tow head, the pompom on his sleeping cap a dab of bright scarlet amid the oppressive gloom. ‘For the store cellar, yes. Broom closet’s just past the landing.’

  Mykkael caught the sleeve of the fellow’s striped nightshirt. ‘Thank you. Keep the light. Go on back to bed.’

  As the surlier of the two men-at-arms drew breath to disagree, the captain silenced him with a glance. His clipped nod dispatched the servant on his way. Then Mykkael waited, while the wavering glow of the rush light receded out of immediate earshot. ‘You don’t want more gossip.’ His low voice emphatic, he added, ‘Don’t tell me, soldier, you aren’t under discipline to keep tinder and spill in your scrip?’

  The other guard stiffened, affronted. ‘You don’t give us orders, you sand-bred cur.’

  Mykkael ignored the insult. ‘Get busy with that flint! A sorcerer’s mark can smoulder like wildfire. You don’t leave one burning, once you know it’s there. If you’re frightened, just say so. I’ll go on alone if need be.’

  ‘But the light,’ the bearded guard blustered, his ruddy face lost amid gathering shadow as the servant set foot on the upper stair and continued his shuffling ascent. ‘We just carry birch bark. Burns out in seconds.’

  ‘Stall a bit more, then you’ll stand in the dark.’ Mykkael shrugged, sardonic. ‘Not a comfortable risk to be taking, where there might be a line of dark craft set at work.’

  One balky man at last stirred to comply.

  Patience gone, Mykkael reached out with blurring speed. He snaked a hand past the guard’s fumbling fingers, and dug flint and spill from the unbuckled scrip. ‘Don’t you trust your commander? I doubt very much we’ll expend what we have before Taskin arrives with pine torches. I hope he also brings men with strong nerves who will act without foolish argument.’

  ‘We should wait till he gets here,’ the surly guard snapped.

  But Mykkael had already lit the rolled birch bark. He pressed the pace down the creaky board staircase, not caring if anyone followed. The recalcitrant guardsmen soon tramped at his heels, their grumbling stilled as they crowded the landing, and the broom-closet door emerged out of veiling darkness. The unvarnished planking had been inscribed: the scrawled figure demarked a crudely shaped lightning bolt, cut diagonally through an array of interlocked circles.

  Mykkael loosed a hissed breath, rolled his shoulders, then forged ahead, resolute. He held up the spill. Bronze features expressionless, he traced the light over the wood, giving each chalky line his relentless inspection. No distraction moved him, even the fresh influx of voices and light, slicing down from the upper corridor. Taskin arrived. Five immaculate guardsmen marched at his heels, bearing oiled rag torches. Boots thundered on wood, the last stretch of stairway descended at a cracking sprint.

  The commander rammed past the shrinking pair detailed as the captain’s escort. He reached Mykkael’s side in a glitter of braid and smartly polished accoutrements. There, he stopped, scarcely winded. His brushed grey head bent, stilled as filed steel, while the crawling progress of the hand-held spill inched over the outermost circle.

  Then, ‘No informative tracks, left pressed in the dirt,’ Taskin observed in clipped opening.

  Mykkael matched that brevity. ‘I saw.’ He pinched the flame out with his fingers, wiped the smutch of soot on his sleeve, then stated, ‘The mark is a fake.’

  ‘How are you certain?’

  ‘It was done with dry chalk, not white river clay’ Mykkael raised his wrist, blotted the beaded sweat from his brow, then swiped his thumb through the pattern. He sniffed carefully. ‘No spittle to bind it. No blood, or worse, urine. A sorcerer’s lines can’t hold any power without a minion’s imprint to lift them to active resonance.’

  ‘That’s detailed knowledge for a man who just claimed he lacked the touch to shift curses.’

  Before the garrison captain could snatch pause to wonder how that fact had changed hands at short notice, Taskin’s glance shifted. He took merciless note, when Mykkael braced a needful hand to the wall to forestall a sharp loss of balance.

  ‘I can’t lift curses,’ the captain restated. He retreated an irritable, dragging step, not quite fast enough to shadow his fingers, which were splayed rigid and quivering. Taskin’s stillness continued to jab at his reserve. Hazed like a fresh recruit, Mykkael found himself pressured to give far more than the simple answer. That loss of control ripped through his aplomb, raising temper just barely leashed. ‘With luck, sometimes, I can ground them.’

  Ice-cool, Taskin queried, ‘At what cost to yourself, soldier?’

  Mykkael flung up his head. The spark of trapped light in his eyes was chipped fire, under the crowding torches. ‘I don’t know!’ Anger doused, he had less success with his exhausted, recalcitrant body. The seizing cramp from his overstressed knee rocked his frame through a running spasm. ‘Trust me, if that mark had been a live cipher, you don’t want the nightmare of guessing.’

  A torch wavered, behind, as a man shifted grip to make a sign against evil.

  The commander cracked, ‘Hold that light steady! The man who just faltered, fetch this one a chair!’

  Someone else muttered, ‘That malformed get of a desert-whelped bitch?’

  Taskin stiffened. ‘No chair, then,’ he agreed, his tone like taut silk run over a sharpened sword blade. ‘My inept torchman will now fetch a camp cot from storage. The man who was insolent will run to the west wing and roust out Jussoud. In minutes, I want him down here with his oil jars, if he has to be hauled from bed, naked!’

  The pair jumped as though whipped.

  ‘You can open the door without penalty,’ said Mykkael, hoping the diversion might snatch him the interval to quiet his chattering teeth.

  ‘I’ll carry on,’ Taskin stated, not moving.

  The camp cot pulled from stores arrived seconds later. The men set up the frame by the corridor wall with no talk, only brisk and relentless efficiency.

  ‘You’ll strip, soldier,’ the commander rapped out, his nailing regard still fixed on the garrison captain.

  A sudden movement, snatched still, preceded the rage that rekindled in Mykkael’s dark eyes.

  Taskin stayed glacially immobi
le, throughout. ‘You will remove your harness and peel your clothes to the skin. Then lie flat and stay there! My orders, soldier. On that cot, voluntarily. Or else my men will do that work for you, followed up by a lashing for insubordination.’

  Mykkael forced a smile through hackled fury. ‘You’d lose some. Not nicely. Let’s duck the unpleasantness.’ He reached up, slipped the fastening on the borrowed cloak, then the tang of the buckle that fastened his sword harness. ‘After all, I did promise I would be diligent, and you have a princess to search for.’ He undid the iron fitting, and removed his weapon with a crack of withering emphasis. ‘The door is safe. Open it.’

  The captain jostled a path through the closed ranks of the guards, and tried not to let sore embarrassment show as heads turned in riveted curiosity. Faced toward the wall, unflinchingly straight, he compelled wooden fingers to loosen the belt of his surcoat.

  ‘You men!’ snapped Taskin. ‘Eyes forward! Whatever duty you have to this realm lies ahead of me in this closet.’

  Exhibiting sangfroid enough to uphold his own order, the commander turned his back on the victim confined to the corridor. He positioned himself in front of the doorway and reached for the string latch, decisive.

  ‘Don’t trust that desert-bred,’ blurted the red-haired sergeant who held the torch lighting his way. ‘How do you know he’s not lying?’

  ‘You’ll volunteer, then?’ Taskin stepped sideways, inviting the man to approach the marked panel himself. The pattern’s chalked lines glared a sinister white under the flare of the flames.

  Bared to the waist, still unlacing his trousers, Mykkael observed the exchange. Unsmiling, he watched the burly sergeant shrink into the packed mass of his fellows. Just as uncertain, the others edged back, none among them prepared to shield him.